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I worked in a central government agency and sometimes dabbled in AI policy. When race is blinded, sometimes the computer will still disproportionately target certain races because of correlated factors.
As long as the algorithm is detecting actual errors, it's okay for it to disproportionately impact certain races (although it will still make the news and people will complain). What's more controversial is when the computer is copying existing human behaviour. If human behaviour can be truly racist (e.g. in an irrational way), the computer can inherit that irrationality, even if blinded.
Right, this is the steelman of the ai bias argument, along with other training data bias like those facial recognition algos that couldn't' detect black faces. But as far as I know they aren't even using an ai. Just a system that looks for potentially suspicious filings to have someone take a look at. Like if your w2 doesn't match the one your employer sent in or in this case the eitc seems to be wildly off.
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